It is immortality here and now for which Tennyson pleads. "'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for which we pant; The "In Memoriam" is not only the dramatization of different moods and various questions, but it is the repository of philosophic reasoning and of a final conviction that, as the poet himself says, "fear, doubts, and suffering will find answer and relief only through Faith, in a God of Love." The perfect beauty of Tennyson; the golden melody; the exquisite art of phrasing; the transcendent loveliness of his vision, render his poems the richest resource for all the moods and needs of life. Who has not felt the enchantment of the lines, "Moreover, something is or seems, That touches me with mystic gleams, "Of something felt, like something here; A book that is pre-eminently one to make itself a Witness of the Dawn is "The Spiritual Sense of the Divina Commedia” by William T. Harris, in which we find Dr. Harris saying of Dante's immortal work:— "But of all the great world-poems, unquestionably Dante's Divina Commedia may be justly claimed to have a spiritual sense, for it possesses a philosophic system and admits of allegorical interpretation. It is par excellence the religious poem of the world. And religion, like philosophy, deals directly with a first principle of the universe, while, like poetry, it clothes its universal ideas in the garb of special events and situations, making them types, and hence symbols, of the kind which may become allegories." The critique of Dr. Harris is one of the most searching moral analysis; of remarkable insight and reasoning and is full of the wisdom and beauty that forever invest the teachings of this philosophic writer, whose work has been one of the most potent and far-reaching influences for national culture in spiritual understanding. The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, in both the scholarly translation of Edward Fitzgerald and the singularly musical and beautiful one by Richard Le Gallienne, has long since enrolled itself as one of the permanent works in great literature, and to the solemn and stately significance of the poet is added the dream and vision of the artist, in those marvellous pictorial interpretations by Elihu Vedder. An edition of the Rubáiyát, with a very fine critical Introduction by Jessie B. Rittenhouse who also edits the book, is a notable one. In this one volume Miss Rittenhouse has collected the several translations that have been made, and her Introductory Essay is among the finest commentaries on the Persian poet. "The world of books is still the world," and in this world one Book stands out with supreme claim; one with whose companionship life is rich, and is led to increasing joy, peace, and adjustment in harmony with the Eternal Purpose. In a complete and convincing response to the demand of the soul for the Witness of the Dawn, where, in the message of poet or prophet, can we discern words so magnetic to impart that holy earnestness as these of the Beloved Disciple, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought |